Thursday
When I was in high school, it was not unusual for college kids to come to the high school to visit teachers during winter break and after school ended in the spring. So Brandon, Craig and I thought nothing of visiting a couple teachers that day. I think I spent a good amount of time telling Mr. Griffith about my Faust class and how well RQ had prepared me for it. We mostly just joked around and chit-chatted with D. and Engle, and I asked Mr. Mueller, another of the art teachers, if Brandon and I could come by the next day to do some paper work in his classroom the next day. He said yes, so...
Friday
Brandon and I returned to the high school to make a box and blank book as my Christmas present for Melissa. Mueller consulted on the best way to construct the box (it was something he'd taught us in class) and Bran shared advice on bookbinding techniques. I used a beautiful blue Italian paper for the box and the book cover. The box was just big enough to hold two cassette tapes and the book. I gave her Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine and Brenda Khan's first album; they were sort of two sides of me that I wanted to share with her.
The evening was quite busy. Once my dad got home (I had to wait for a car; Brandon had driven earlier) I headed to Melissa's and we exchanged presents, because my family was heading out to Arizona for Christmas. She loved her gift, and I loved what she gave me -- a shadowbox with two butterflies representing the two of us (one was orange and brown, the other midnight blue and black) and a wire sculpture of a tree, made by a local artist whose work I'd admired for years at Art in the Barn. We ended up scrapping our original plans and instead hung out at 'Round the Clock and talked for a couple hours, then drove up to her old church in Woodstock. It was dark, but not locked, so we went inside and looked around by the light of the emergency lights.
At 1 I met Mike and Emily at Denny's and we caught up with them. It was the first I learned just how bad they'd done at school -- I sort of knew Mike was doing poorly, but Emily was a surprise; it turned out she spent a lot of time partying, like a lot of freshmen do. Hearing how they did made me feel a little better about my first quarter.
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